Inviting Disaster, 25 Years On

 In the small Nebraska town of Lewellen, there's a restaurant and art gallery named The Most Unlikely Place. And it really is a surprising find in such a tiny town. 

I thought of the cafe and its improbable name earlier this month when attending a dinner meeting of the Minnesota Geological Society. I talked with the fellow named Roger sitting next to me, also retired, and we shared stories about our work lives. 

I mentioned I'd been writing nonfiction since 1979, including my book on techno-disasters and close calls. He asked which cases were included in Inviting Disaster and I rattled off a few, ending with the near-destruction of American Airlines Flight 96 in June 1972, a DC-10 jumbo jet saved by the remarkable skill and foresight of the captain, Bryce McCormick. (photo: Ken Haynes collection)

McCormick had anticipated loss of flight controls three months before, when training on the airline's DC-10 flight simulator in Fort Worth. He'd stayed late to train on how to steer the plane with just the throttles. 

Then, when a cargo door blew out over Windsor, Ontario, taking out most of the controls, McCormick was able to nurse the plane to a safe landing in Detroit. 

To my astonishment, Roger said he'd been a passenger on that flight. It was such an unlikely meeting, so coincidental, that it inspired me to gather thoughts about lessons I've drawn from 25 years of lectures, opeds, and interviews that followed the publication of Inviting Disaster. So stay tuned for that!

"The Greatest Gift," a column from 1915

Our book club is reading Nicolo Machiavelli's The Prince, and by the time I reached Chapters 22-24 (on leaders and their advisers), this classic column came to mind: 

THE GREATEST GIFT

From The Smart Set, November 1915 

By Owen Hatteras (pseudonym of H.L. Mencken and George J. Nathan)

THE fairies who fly with gifts to the cradles of all new-born babies had had a busy day. There had been so many little newcomers, and from early morn to nightfall they had flitted from home to home, bestowing riches here, beauty there, sins, virtues, graces and failings in a haphazard sort of way. They had paused, too, at sunset, in a tenement basement, and breathed genius into the heart of a tiny boy. Now, it is very tiring to bestow the gift of genius; it requires great effort and that's why the fairies almost never grant it. When they were finished, they were a little weary and cross, and wanted to fly home to their palace of moonbeams. But one cradle remained unvisited. So they hied them to the side of a colicky, squirming infant boy who wailed raucously into the night. The fairies grew angry as they heard him. Reluctantly they shrugged their dainty wings, and flew off without leaving a single gift behind. Only one wavered an instant, glanced pityingly at the ugly child, and called over her shoulder as she hurried to join her sisters:

"I bestow upon you the gift of Gigantic Ignorance, and the gift of Majestic Incapacity."

The years went by.

The boy grew up into a benign-faced, wide-girthed man who looked like a picture of God by Harrison Fisher.

He wrote Books with a Purpose which ran into twentieth and thirtieth editions, and spread his fame into all lands until he had scarcely time to rake in the shekels that came pouring into his coffers.

Newspapers vied with one another for the opportunity to pay thousands for his Uplift Editorials.

He gave utterance, at lectures, to Great Ideas upon suffrage, upon eugenics, upon temperance, upon the social evil and the poor working girl.

Sightseeing buses stopped before his house, and his disciples gazed with reverence upon its sacred portals.

He preached zealously against the Vicious Influence of Continental Literature, and cleared the theaters and book-stores of every vestige thereof.

They called him the Protector of Innocence, the Champion of the Masses, and from far and near adherents flocked unto him.

He went into politics. They made him mayor, they made him governor, they made him president for three terms, almost they made him God.

And as he drove through the streets, while the crowd waved their hats and cheered him wildly and went mad in honor of their Great One, men bowed their heads, and whispered to one another in awe:

"What great, mysterious gift was bestowed at birth upon our Mighty One, to make him thus our King, our Emperor, our Holiest of the Holy?"